(Yicai Global) June 9 – Scientists have found a very active and repeated rapid burst of radio (FRB), just the second example of its kind, which hints at the evolutionary picture of these mysterious cosmic events.
FRBs are the brightest millisecond astronomical transients in radio bands of as yet unknown origin. It has been reported that less than five percent of them are never detected and only a few are persistently active.
Using the five-hundred-meter aperture spherical radio telescope (FAST), also known as the “China Sky Eye”, an international team led by astronomers from the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) has discovered and located a repeater. active. a fast radio called FRB 20190520B in a metal-poor dwarf galaxy nearly three billion light-years from Earth.
Telescopes such as the Very Large Array, the Palomar Telescope, the Keck Telescope, the Subaru Telescope, and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope then continued with observations, respectively, to confirm FRB 20190520B.
The scientists said that FRB 20190520B appears to reside in a complex plasma environment that resembles that of a super-bright supernova, suggesting that it may be a “newborn.”
It is the second example of a highly active FRB with repeated bursts and persistent radio emission between bursts from a compact region, following the discovery of the first FRB repeater 20121102A in 2016, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The differences between the two FRBs and all the others have hinted at the possibility that there may be two different types of FRBs, the researchers said.
Now, the candidates for FRB sources are the super-dense neutron stars that remain after a massive star explodes as a supernova, or the neutron stars with ultra-strong magnetic fields, called magnets.
Astronomers said that there may be two different mechanisms or that the objects that produce them act differently at different stages of their evolution.
“Furthermore, we postulate that FRB 20121102A and FRB 20190520B represent the initial stage of an evolving FRB population,” the document’s co-author, Li Di, told NAOC.
“A consistent picture of the origin and evolution of FRBs is likely to emerge in a few years,” Li said.
Located in a naturally deep, round karst depression in southwest China’s Guizhou Province, FAST began formally operating in January 2020 and officially opened to the world on March 31, 2021. It is believed that is the most sensitive radio telescope in the world.